How a mom with a printer made $100 bills

posted by Derek Andersen, Newser Staff
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2 years ago

(NEWSER) – A Hewlett-Packard 3-in-1 inkjet printer was essentially all it took for a working mom in Virginia to become a counterfeiter. Bloomberg takes a look at the case of Tarshema Brice, a 34-year-old hairstylist and janitor in Richmond who pleaded guilty last month to creating as much as $20,000 in phony bills over a two-year span. She "was raising six children on her own with modest income and was filling the gaps by making counterfeit money," specifically $50 and $100 bills, says her lawyer. She's also "emblematic" of something much larger, per Bloomberg: how easy digital technology has made it to churn out fake bills. You used to need a printing press; but in just 20 years, the percentage of such bills made on digital or laser printers and recovered by the feds has swelled from 1% to almost 60%.